eboard-users — Low traffic list for announcements and reports

[eboard-users] FICS, eboard and timeseal

[David R. <dav...@gm...>]

How?

I did as the guide described. I got the correct timeseal. I placed it in 
a directory that eboard could find (actually in all of them since none 
of them seemed to work), but timeseal is still not active?

Do I have to do anything else? Like enable timeseal in the eboard GUI 
somewhere?

/David

Re: [eboard-users] Chessd support in the future?

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003, Jacob S. wrote:

> I've also been able to telnet into chessd on port 5000, so I could run
> some commands and copy/paste or screenshot the responses, if that would
> help anything. Being short on documentation, I haven't found any way to
> run the server with different options, but it seems to output the game
> status in a simple ascii art board.

Hi, I haven't run chessd for ages now, and I don't think I'll have enough
time to download/compile/try/debug before january. If you have a server
set up somewhere, I can try to find out what's wrong. Just find me on FICS
and talk to me (but have a little patience if I'm playing a game or a
tourney).

Be aware that eboard expects game information to be sent in style 12
notation, that is, lines like:

<12> rnbqkb-r pppppppp -----n-- -------- ----P--- -------- PPPPKPPP
RNBQ-BNRB -1 0 0 1 1 0 7 Newton Einstein 1 2 12 39 39 119 122 2 K/e1-e2 (0:06)
Ke2 0

On FICS this is set by eboard by sending "style 12" just after login. It
may be that chessd requires it to be "set style 12", I don't know. It
should be easy to find out if a chessd server is up and available for me.
I just don't want to connect to CEX, since I have quite a quarrel with the
idiots who run it.

If you can't make a server available, run eboard with "eboard -log",
connect to the server, play one or two games (even if you just see the
notation) and send me the resulting ~/LOG.eboard file in a private email
(don't send attachments to the mailing list).

-- Pulga (author of eboard)

.........................................................................
Felipe Paulo Guazzi Bergo - Computer Science MSc Student at Unicamp
be...@se... - Campinas - SP - Brazil - Earth
GPG/PGP mail welcome - GPG/PGP Key: EF8EE808 (keyserver pgp.mit.edu)

* Aibohphobia (n.): 1. Fear of palindromes.

[eboard-users] Chessd support in the future?

[Jacob S. <sto...@6t...>]

Ok, so I thought it'd be nice to setup my own private chess server for
me and a couple friends that like to play. I downloaded the latest
source from http://chessd.sourceforge.net and, after a little confusion,
and not finding much documentation, I got it to compile. 

I was able to connect to it with version 0.4.3 of eboard (latest version
in Debian 3.0r2), but things weren't working quite right. I noticed
eboard.sourceforge.net had 0.9.5 for the latest version, so I downloaded
that and compiled it without a problem. It seems 0.9.5 has the same
problem(s) because chessd isn't a true ICS server, even though they try
to be (to an extent). Thanks to Pulga and a couple others for pointing
this out to me.

Now my question is, after seeing how much better eboard is than all the
other clients I could find, is there any chance of seeing chessd support
in eboard in the future? If yes, is there anything I can do to help, now
that I've got a chessd server running? Unfortunately, I'm bandwidth
restricted on my dsl line, so I can't open the server to the public. If
there's no hope for chessd, is there any other server software available
for download that might work with eboard?

I've also been able to telnet into chessd on port 5000, so I could run
some commands and copy/paste or screenshot the responses, if that would
help anything. Being short on documentation, I haven't found any way to
run the server with different options, but it seems to output the game
status in a simple ascii art board.

I'm afraid I'm only a PHP programmer (if you can call that programming)
and Linux systems administrator, so I probably wouldn't be too much help
programming. I'd be glad to help if there's something I can do though.

Any thoughts, suggestions?

TIA,
Jacob

P.S. Thanks again to Pulga, ElOso and gyth from FICS for helping me,
even though I was such a newbie to the command syntax on FICS.

----- 
GnuPG Key: 1024D/16377135

Are you tired of being a crash test dummy for Microsoft? Discover Linux.

----- 
GnuPG Key: 1024D/16377135

Q: How many Microsoft Programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
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Q: How many Linux users does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Two. One to write the HOWTO-LIGHTBULB-CRONJOB, and another to read
it. 

[eboard-users] Announcement: eboard 0.9.5

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

Hi,

eboard 0.9.5 has been released and is available for download from the
usual places:

http://eboard.sf.net

ftp://ftp.seul.org/pub/chess/eboard

Despite the long time since the last release (july), changes to eboard
code were accumulating on my computer without being released. My plan is
to work fixing all known bugs and issues and release a 1.0.0 version
still this year. Next year I'll move to GTK+ 2.x and consider
incorporating the feature requests I've been declining until now (seek
dialog, formula helper, etc.)

The changelog since 0.9.0 (yes, I skipped some version numbers this time)
follows below, but basically I dropped the stock GNU autoconf/automake and
gettext, and am using now my own configure script system and language
support libraries. As a result, the source tarball is 200K smaller. Bugs
may have been introduced in this change, but it made the development work
become much lighter.

I have also changed the piece sets that come with the default eboard
installation. RedHat 7+ RPMs should appear on the ftp site in the next few
days. Have fun, and if you find bugs, make sure to post them at the
project page or email me about them.

.........................................................................
Felipe Paulo Guazzi Bergo - Computer Science MSc Student at Unicamp
be...@se... - Campinas - SP - Brazil - Earth
GPG/PGP mail welcome - GPG/PGP Key: EF8EE808 (keyserver pgp.mit.edu)

Changelog since 0.9.0:

0.9.5:
  * [all]  Completely changed the compilation process and
           internationalization support, no longer depending
           on GNU autoconf/automake or gettext.

  * [ics]  Quite revamped the code that colorizes and parses
           ICS output, I hope nothing is broken.

  * [ics]  Non-move updates to observed games (setting the clock,
           player names, ratings in a relay, for example) will
           not play the "Move Made" sound.
           (closes bug ticket #786179).

  * [fics] Fixed detection of ratings in game relays, where
           player names can contain underscores, like GM_Anand.
           (closes bug ticket #786177)

  * [all]  The sound event dialog would incorrectly show "Beep"
           when the event was configured to run an external
           program, fixed. (closes bug ticket #785847)

  * [ics]  Fixed a bug that would make eboard crash when the
           connection was closed bu the ICS server on some
           special rare occasions. (closes bug ticket #775154)

  * [ics]  Fixed a translation bug in the FICS protocol that would
           translate the command 'games' sent to get rating
           information.

  * [ics]  Fixed a bug that would cause eboard to crash when an
           observed game ended with a movement and move animation
           was on.

  * [all]  Fixed the vectorized piece set, which was full of bugs.
           (would crash on board resizes, appear with gray bars and
            other oddities)

Re: [eboard-users] email games

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003, Michael P. Soulier wrote:

>     Hello,
>
>     I'm a long time xboard/cmail user, and I was wondering if it is
> possible to use eboard for email games by exchanging PGN files? Xboard
> has full integration for this, to where I can send the email from a menu
> option in xboard, and I can pipe the response to cmail with my email
> client. Can eboard do this?

Hi,

No, eboard can't do this. I never played chess by email, thus I don't know
how the automation goes (when you receive your opponent's move, where does
it get saved ?)

It shouldn't be hard to implement, I just never thought of anything like
this.

-- Felipe

Re: [eboard-users] email games

[Michael P. S. <mso...@di...>]

On 22/11/03 Dimitris Vyzovitis did speaketh:

> oops - were you referring to email correspondence games? If so my answer=
=20
> was completely irrelavant - I thought you wanted to do some form of ipc=
=20
> between your local programs by using email (kind of braindead).

    Yes, an email correspondence game. I unfortunately don't often have
large blocks of time to stay connected and play live.=20

    Mike

--=20
Michael P. Soulier <mso...@di...>
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessari=
ly a
good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could=
 be
dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead." -- RFC 1925

Re: [eboard-users] email games

[Dimitris V. <vy...@me...>]

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003, Dimitris Vyzovitis wrote:

> On Sat, 22 Nov 2003, Michael P. Soulier wrote:
> 
> >     Hello,
> > 
> >     I'm a long time xboard/cmail user, and I was wondering if it is
> > possible to use eboard for email games by exchanging PGN files? 

oops - were you referring to email correspondence games? If so my answer 
was completely irrelavant - I thought you wanted to do some form of ipc 
between your local programs by using email (kind of braindead).

-- vyzo

Re: [eboard-users] email games

[Dimitris V. <vy...@me...>]

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003, Michael P. Soulier wrote:

>     Hello,
> 
>     I'm a long time xboard/cmail user, and I was wondering if it is
> possible to use eboard for email games by exchanging PGN files? Xboard
> has full integration for this, to where I can send the email from a menu
> option in xboard, and I can pipe the response to cmail with my email
> client. Can eboard do this?

Anything wrong with using the mailmoves command on fics? Not as 
convenient as piping, but you still get the game in your mailbox an you 
can use your procmail filters to send it to the right place. Also, auto 
saving games gets the job done for games you play or observe (there is an 
option in preferences for that).

-- vyzo

[eboard-users] email games

[Michael P. S. <mso...@di...>]

    Hello,

    I'm a long time xboard/cmail user, and I was wondering if it is
possible to use eboard for email games by exchanging PGN files? Xboard
has full integration for this, to where I can send the email from a menu
option in xboard, and I can pipe the response to cmail with my email
client. Can eboard do this?

    Thanks,
    Mike

--=20
Michael P. Soulier <mso...@di...>
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessari=
ly a
good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could=
 be
dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead." -- RFC 1925

Re: [eboard-users] Display lost pieces

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, Arvid J=F6nson wrote:

> Hi! I'm looking for a way to see what pieces I or the opponent may have
> lost during the game. Is it not possible, or have I just missed it? I
> would like to have those displayed somewhere where that mouse icon is
> now. What is that about anyway?
>
> Thanks for any help

That mouse icon has the right mouse button in a different color. How about
clicking it to see what it does ?

eboard does not display captured pieces. The middle region of the clock
area is used for displaying the crazyhouse stock, and I believe showing
pieces there on regular chess games would be confusing, but maybe
something can be thought for the future, like moving the clocks more to
the center and making a small row of pieces above the top clock and below
the lower clock.

What eboard shows is the material score for each side, like

Material 29-29

Material counts pawn=3D1, knight=3D3, bishop=3D3, rook=3D5, queen=3D9, king=
 is not
counted (infinite value), except in losers and suicide variants, where
material is just the number of pieces (all have a value of 1).

=2E........................................................................
Felipe Paulo Guazzi Bergo - Computer Science MSc Student at Unicamp
be...@se... - Campinas - SP - Brazil - Earth
GPG/PGP mail welcome - GPG/PGP Key: EF8EE808 (keyserver pgp.mit.edu)

* The core just keeps dumping, and dumping, and dumping...

[eboard-users] Display lost pieces

[Arvid J. <ar...@su...>]

Hi!
I'm looking for a way to see what pieces I or the opponent may have lost =
during the game.
Is it not possible, or have I just missed it?
I would like to have those displayed somewhere where that mouse icon is n=
ow. What is that about anyway?

Thanks for any help

Arvid

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Re: [eboard-users] SVG Themes

[Arvid J. <ar...@su...>]

On 7.8 2003 04:28, Felipe Bergo wrote:
>Are there any decent SVG editors on Linux ?

Yeah! I only come to think of Sodipodi (sourceforge project) but it is ve=
ry renowned. There are some very impressing drawings at their screenshots.

> Is there people with enough time to sketch a few piecesets ?

That's a good question. I must admit, I'm not a skilled vector graphics d=
rawer, and I certainly don't have any experience with drawing chess piece=
s.
But I assume that a skilled drawer would be able to load the old bitmap, =
and carbon copy it, so to speak, into vectors. And of course, after that =
polish it a bit.

Hopefully there is someone who would be interested in doing so. :)

>-- Felipe

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http://webmail.surfnet.fi
------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [eboard-users] SVG Themes

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Arvid J=F6snon wrote:

> Will there be support for SVG (vector graphics) themes at some point?
> There would be at least 2 visual benefits: a) it looks perfectly smooth
> in any size, even larger dimensions b) it would be easier for the end
> user to slightly modify the theme, of his taste Also, I assume that the
> disk space required for the themes would be smaller.

Are there any decent SVG editors on Linux ? Is there people with enough
time to sketch a few piecesets ? I don't know how complex SVG is to
interpret, but it doesn't sound like a bad idea.

But most likely it is something for after 1.0.0, which I hope will be out
still this year with (hopefully) no remaining bugs.

-- Felipe

[eboard-users] SVG Themes

[Arvid J. <ar...@su...>]

Will there be support for SVG (vector graphics) themes at some point?
There would be at least 2 visual benefits:
a) it looks perfectly smooth in any size, even larger dimensions
b) it would be easier for the end user to slightly modify the theme, of h=
is taste
Also, I assume that the disk space required for the themes would be small=
er.

Arvid

------------------------------------------------------------------
Gratis svenskpr=E5kig e-post och f=F6rm=E5nliga textmeddelanden
http://webmail.surfnet.fi
------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [eboard-users] Very few seek calls on FICS

[Miguel <mi...@co...>]

FICS really need more players, but already have a massive presence which=
 guarantee that you can find good opponents at any time.
Icc always have 200+ players connected, but isnt the biggest chess server.=
 Yahoo! Games have more

Sanhux

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 4/8/2003 at 11:00 Felipe Bergo wrote:

>On Mon, 4 Aug 2003, Arvid J=F6snon wrote:
>
>> Hello! I connected to this FICS server, and it says that it is the
>> largest ICS chess server around. But in the "Seek table" there's usually
>> only about 3 seek calls. How can that be?
>>
>> Arvid
>

Re: [eboard-users] Very few seek calls on FICS

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

On Mon, 4 Aug 2003, Arvid J=F6snon wrote:

> Hello! I connected to this FICS server, and it says that it is the
> largest ICS chess server around. But in the "Seek table" there's usually
> only about 3 seek calls. How can that be?
>
> Arvid

ICC (the internet chess club) has actually more players than FICS, but
it's a paid service (eboard does not work on ICC, and their windows
software is spyware, by the way).

I don't know what time you connected to FICS, at late US hours there are
really few seeks. Right now, there are 45 ads (unfiltered, if you set up a
formula, the formula will filter the ads, but I checked your account
there, and you have no formula set.). The "up" command will show stats
about the current number of players:

There are currently 489 players, with a high of 678 since last restart.
There are currently 138 games, with a high of 213 since last restart.

the 'ustat' command will show the player count in the last 24 hours, like
this:

    Average users connected (last 24 hours)

      |         ##  ###
 561 -|        ###  ####
      |       ####  #####
 537 -|       ####  ######
      |   ##  ##### ######
 513 -|   #################
      | ###################
 489 -| ###################
      | ####################
 465 -| ####################                           #
      | #####################                          #
 441 -| ######################                        ##
      | ######################                        ##
 417 -| #########################                   ####
      | #########################                  #####
 393 -| ###########################             ########
      | ###########################             ########
 369 -| ############################           #########
      | ############################           #########
 345 -| #############################          #########
      | ##############################        ##########
 321 -| ##############################       ###########
      | ################################    ############
 297 -| #################################   ############
      | ################################## #############
      Z ################################################
      +--+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
         1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1 1 1 1
         5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3                     0 1 2 3 4

(the time shown is GMT). The player count is like that every day, and at
that "valley" hours it can be somewhat hard to find a game. It helps if
you post a seek on your own, of course.

If you're in doubt whether the seek table is working, you can type 'so' to
see all seeks you can reply to, and 'so all' for all seeks. Seeks can
exclude ratings within a range, and you usually don't see seeks of people
who have you on their noplay lists or whom you have in your noplay list.

But as far as I know, there's no bug with the seek table.

=2E........................................................................
Felipe Paulo Guazzi Bergo - Computer Science MSc Student at Unicamp
be...@se... - Campinas - SP - Brazil - Earth
GPG/PGP mail welcome - GPG/PGP Key: EF8EE808 (keyserver pgp.mit.edu)

* The core just keeps dumping, and dumping, and dumping...

[eboard-users] Very few seek calls on FICS

[Arvid J. <ar...@su...>]

Hello!
I connected to this FICS server, and it says that it is the largest ICS c=
hess server around.
But in the "Seek table" there's usually only about 3 seek calls.
How can that be?

Arvid

------------------------------------------------------------------
Gratis svenskpr=E5kig e-post och f=F6rm=E5nliga textmeddelanden
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Re: [eboard-users] Critical review of eboard-extras packs

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Nayel Farag wrote:

> Some new piece sets have highly impressed me,
> but unfortunately in almost all cases there
> is a problem with the contrast of the black figures
> to the black fields. Often, the black fields are just
> too dark so that the black figures are not well
> visible.
>
> I solve this problem by clicking at
> Settings - Options - Use single-color fields
> (in german: Einstellungen - Optionen - Einfarbige Felder benutzen)
> Single color fields can be changed in color and brightness.
> The patterned fields, however, can not be changed.
> In my view, all the patterned black fields are too dark,
> and only the single-color fields are usuable.
>
> Another problem: In some cases the proportion of
> the figure size to the field size is not so good, i.e.,
> the figures are too big in relation to the fields.
> Besides, in some cases the pawns are too big in relation
> to the officers (root, knight, bishop, queen, king).

Thanks for your opinion. The real problem here is that it all boils down
to that -- personal taste. One thing I know eboard is lacking is good
themes for high resolutions - people running 1600x1200 screens are
becoming common and the current piece graphics become pixelated when
enlarged.

In particular, my current choice of pieceset, the one I play with everyday
on FICS is the pieces from Book/Marble (extras pack 1) and the square
background from Harlequin/Wood (extras pack 2).

If you (or anybody else) wants to design new piecesets, feel free to do
it, the format is a PNG graphics file with dimensions proportional to 7:2
(for non "3D" sets). Exact rules can be found in the Themes document on
the eboard page, documentation section.

Most of the current themes are based on freeware chess fonts or piecesets
from other chess clients. Now some random comments:

> 1) Very good figure sets (simply a dream!):

> Enquil Desert

I'm very happy to see this on the top list, this is the only one that I
drew from scratch (actually drawing the pieces instead of using an
existing chess font, graphics or a 3D renderer).

> Harlequin Wood (here, maybe the black king is a little too similar to
> the black bishop)

This is a freeware chess font, I just used it the way it was.
While I didn't spend time on it, someone could surely get these fonts and
use some time making Dyche-like pieces based on them, it would probably
look good.

> Rastrap marble (3 D)

Rastapov. All themes ending with *pov were done with a 3D model of chess
pieces I made in POV-Ray a few years ago, they can be rendered from any
angle and perspective, if that's useful for anyone. I miss ears in the
knights, but other than that, it's a good 3D model. I should put the pov
files available on the web one of these days.

> Chess Base (the figures are a little too big in relation to the
> fields)

This is a standard book diagram display, pieces are large so that small
diagrams printed on books get readable. The piece size in relation to the
square depends too much on taste, I believe. Most likely I should add a
configurabl;e setting in eboard to allow scaling pieces so that they have
80%, 90% or 100% of their "current size" in respect to the square side.

> Nut Bold 3D Sandwood (the figures are too big)

Nut bolt is more of a joke, I just can't understand the board with these
pieces (it was contributed by someone else, like most piecesets, and my
intention is to provide as many options as possible, so I haven't
refused contributions until now).

> Book marble (dito)

I happen to think of these pieces as the most perfect set, I've almost
made them the default pieceset in the "bare" eboard distribution many
times.

> Sad Green (I feel attracted to the color.
> However, here the black figures seem to be better
> designed than the white figures)

This piece set was obtained with an impressionism image filter over the
Dyche pieces. I'll eventually make blue and beige/orange versions of it,
so that it goes along with whichever desktop theme people use.

> Vision cubes (there is a problem with the black knights)

there are also some leftover pixels from the queen in the bishops...
looks like this graphic needs fixing.

> 5) Poor:
> --------
> Stone cold

agreed. This one should die and I regret doing it, and this one is my
fault, unfortunately.

> Old classic dark

The blue background really kills it, it was a contribution and I was out
of good marble and wood patterns to use as background, ended up accepting
this one with these squares. You can still save it using the squares from
some other pieceset.

> Yahoo plain

Given the name, I wouldn't expect it to be good at all. I have heard
people advocate that this set is good if you need to have a very small
board size.

> I hope that my review helps. May be I have forgotten a figure set,
> because there are so many.
> Some of the figure sets are really highlights; congratulations!

Thanks, feedback is always welcome. Once upon a time the themes used to be
available individually from the eboard web page, I believe it would be
good to have a dynamic page generated off a database allowing people to
rate the sets and sort them according to the rating (like winamp/xmms skin
sites usually do). I'm not sure if sourceforge's database service is any
good, I think I'll give it a try in this second semester.


.........................................................................
Felipe Paulo Guazzi Bergo - Computer Science MSc Student at Unicamp
be...@se... - Campinas - SP - Brazil - Earth
GPG/PGP mail welcome - GPG/PGP Key: EF8EE808 (keyserver pgp.mit.edu)

* Software Independent: Won't work with any software.

[eboard-users] Critical review of eboard-extras packs

[Nayel F. <nay...@gm...>]

Critical review of the graphical piece sets
in the eboard themes-packs

Some new piece sets have highly impressed me,
but unfortunately in almost all cases there
is a problem with the contrast of the black figures
to the black fields. Often, the black fields are just
too dark so that the black figures are not well
visible.

I solve this problem by clicking at
Settings - Options - Use single-color fields
(in german: Einstellungen - Optionen - Einfarbige Felder benutzen)
Single color fields can be changed in color and brightness.
The patterned fields, however, can not be changed.
In my view, all the patterned black fields are too dark,
and only the single-color fields are usuable.

Another problem: In some cases the proportion of
the figure size to the field size is not so good, i.e.,
the figures are too big in relation to the fields.
Besides, in some cases the pawns are too big in relation
to the officers (root, knight, bishop, queen, king).

Now I come to speak about the figure sets. I divide them
into 5 categories with descending qualitiy (from 1 = very good
to 5 = poor).

1) Very good figure sets (simply a dream!):
-------------------------------------------
Diagram Red Wood
Enquil Desert
Berlin Wood
Adventurer Wood
Harlequin Wood (here, maybe the black king is a little too similar to
the black bishop)
Utrech blue
Rastrap marble (3 D)
Whitney 3D marble

2) Quite good figure sets:
--------------------------
Chess Base (the figures are a little too big in relation to the
fields)
Dyche stucco (here the figure size is good)
Kingdom marble
Mayan marble
Slics plastic (here the black figures could be better)
WCN Grainy wood (the figures are too big)
Altiner 3D Wood/marble (Very good 3D figures, good perspective,
but the figures are too big)
Nut Bold 3D Sandwood (the figures are too big)

3) Acceptable:
--------------
Alpha blue (interesing shape, but the black figures are not so clear)
Book marble (dito)
CMF gray (interesting shape, but the figures are too big,
and the pawns are too big)
Leipzip Paper (dito)
Dominincal Plain (figures too big)
Sad Green (I feel attracted to the color.
However, here the black figures seem to be better
designed than the white figures)

4) not so good:
---------------
Chap marble (color difference between white and black figures is not
so good (orange versus red))
Staunton wood
Traveller sand (the figures are far too big, especially the pawns)
Ususal wood
Vision cubes (there is a problem with the black knights)

5) Poor:
--------
Stone cold
Old classic dark
Yahoo plain

I hope that my review helps. May be I have forgotten a figure set,
because there are so many.
Some of the figure sets are really highlights; congratulations!

Yours sincerely
Nayel Farag

Am Die, 2003-07-08 um 03.58 schrieb Felipe Bergo:
> 
> and after 3 ice ages...
> 
> a new piece graphics and sounds package is finally released for eboard.
> 
> eboard-extras pack 2 has 12 new piece sets and 10 new sounds. It does not
> depend on pack 1. (you can install just pack 1, just pack 2 or both)
> 
> It's at
> 
> ftp://ftp.seul.org/pub/chess/eboard/eboard-extras-2.tar.gz
> 
> and at sourceforge also.
> 
> (and this pack does _not_ require eboard 0.9.0, you can install it to
> older eboards too)
> 
> Have fun,
> 
> -- Felipe
> 
 

[eboard-users] announcement: eboard extras, pack 2

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

and after 3 ice ages...

a new piece graphics and sounds package is finally released for eboard.

eboard-extras pack 2 has 12 new piece sets and 10 new sounds. It does not
depend on pack 1. (you can install just pack 1, just pack 2 or both)

It's at

ftp://ftp.seul.org/pub/chess/eboard/eboard-extras-2.tar.gz

and at sourceforge also.

(and this pack does _not_ require eboard 0.9.0, you can install it to
older eboards too)

Have fun,

-- Felipe

[eboard-users] eboard release announcement: 0.9.0

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

hi, eboard 0.9.0 has been released.

Although it won't crash, there are some issues with this release that
would make me call it "unstable", and I believe there will be a 0.9.1
release in early august fixing these issues. So I _do not_ recommend that
package maintainers (debian, RPMs, etc) build binary packages of eboard
0.9.0, wait for 0.9.1.

The changelog follows at the bottom of this email, as usual. The main
issue with 0.9.0 is that I've been playing with the translations and they
may be simply broken. A czech translation has been added. New features
have been introduced, but the menu options and dialogs for these new
features haven't been translated yet. As soon as I get the translations,
0.9.1 should be released. (most likely the translations aren't broken - I
installed several different versions of gettext in my computer in the last
few weeks and most likely it's my gettext that isn't doing well with glibc
- I'll make a fresh Linux install in a few weeks and that should undo the
mess).

Some issues that will surely get fixed on 0.9.1: mouse wheel scrolling
(currently disabled) will be available again, and I will look at some
engine issues people have reported (those require some time for debugging,
and I chose to postpone these and release 0.9.0 soon)

Two features requested by users are in 0.9.0: peer to peer playing (one
eboard connects directly with another eboard) and move retraction
(takeback) when playing against an engine.

Download links are available at

http://eboard.sourceforge.net/download.html

ChangeLog since 0.8.0:

0.9.0

  * [ics]  Fixed incompatibility with servers that allow digits
           in player handles (such as Gustav998).

  * [all]  Changed the way new input is detected, will probably
           make lightning playing on ICS less sluggish.

  * [eng]  Added the Retract Move command to the Game menu,
           allowing to take back a move in a game against an
           engine. It does nothing on ICS or P2P modes.

  * [all]  Added peer-to-peer (P2P) connection (one eboard connects
           to other eboard to allow network play).

  * [eng]  Fixed a bug in the time control edit dialog,
           the control type selection would always show
           up as Fixed Time per Move regardless of the
           current setting.

  * [all]  Atomic games loaded from PGN will now be browsed
           correctly (with explosions). (as long as the
           Variant key in the PGN is set to "atomic", which
           is already ok in games saved by eboard itself).

  * [ics]  The seek table will now be cleared after the
           connection with the server is lost.

  * [all]  Fixed font encoding problem on tab labels, color
           selection buttons, [chat]/[cmd] button, bug pane
           action buttons. This problem only affected
           translations (non-english).
	   * Local Game List may still have the problem, mail
             Ales about it *

  * [all]  Save desktop geometry will now save the position of
           the pane division in the main window, thanks to
           Tristan Colgate for the patch.

.........................................................................
Felipe Paulo Guazzi Bergo - Computer Science MSc Student at Unicamp
be...@se... - Campinas - SP - Brazil - Earth
GPG/PGP mail welcome - GPG/PGP Key: EF8EE808 (keyserver pgp.mit.edu)

* Aibohphobia (n.): 1. Fear of palindromes.

Re: [eboard-users] To which other serves (than FICS) I can connect with eboard ?

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

On Sat, 28 Jun 2003, Nayel Farag wrote:

> The Server http://jeu.echecs.com has quite a lot of players and offers a
> Java Applet on its homepage. But jeu.echecs.com also belongs to the
> xboard compatible servers,for example it is possible to connect to it
> with:
(snip)

hi, I have modified eboard's code to properly (I believe) handle servers
with digits in the handles and which don't send the ***** Starting
(SERVER) session as (YOURNAME) line.

A testing version of eboard is available at:

ftp://ftp.seul.org/pub/chess/eboard/testing/eboard-0.8.99dev1.tar.bz2

to compile it you would

wget ftp://ftp.seul.org/pub/chess/eboard/testing/eboard-0.8.99dev1.tar.bz2
bzip2 -cd eboard-0.8.99dev1.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
cd eboard-0.8.99dev1
./configure
make

and run it (without installing) with ./eboard
(the shared files from a previously installed eboard will suffice, so
don't uninstall your existing version to test this one)

if make fails, try

make clean
./configure --disable-nls
make

if that still fails, do make -k >error.txt 2>&1 and email me the resulting
error.txt file.

I have logged in to jeu.echecs.com (port 5000, protocol=FICS without
timeseal) and played as guest, looks like everything is fine -- you'll see
some messages about non-existent variables that eboard tries to set, but
that's not harmful. I haven't made an account there so I don't know if it
is working fine with registered login.

If you still have problems (logging in registered), let me know, and I'll
create an account there for me and try to fix it.

If all goes well 0.9.0 should be released in a few days.

(the ChangeLog within that archive lists all modifications since 0.8.0, if
you're curious)

P.S.: I've logged in to ICC with this testing version, it gave me an error
when I tried to observe two games at the same time. Since "not working on
ICC" is a feature, not a bug, I didn't care. But if you have any problem
with a non-ICC server, let me know and I'll try to fix it.

P.S.2: eboard will not highlight lines with your handle in servers like
jeu.echecs.com, because eboard uses the ***** Starting... line to find out
what your handle is, and this server doesn't send it. I believe it's a
minor issue, so I'll leave this to be fixed in the future.

.........................................................................
Felipe Paulo Guazzi Bergo - Computer Science MSc Student at Unicamp
be...@se... - Campinas - SP - Brazil - Earth
GPG/PGP mail welcome - GPG/PGP Key: EF8EE808 (keyserver pgp.mit.edu)

* This isn't right. This isn't even wrong! - Wolfgang Pauli

Re: [eboard-users] To which other serves (than FICS) I can connect with eboard ?

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

On Sat, 28 Jun 2003, Nayel Farag wrote:

> Hello,
>
> there is an option in eboard to connect to another server (an other than
> the Free Internet Chess Server). Well, I have tried to connect to the
> French FICS which address is jeu.echecs.com but it does not work,
> because the user name is not transmitted correctly.
>
> The Server http://jeu.echecs.com has quite a lot of players and offers a
> Java Applet on its homepage. But jeu.echecs.com also belongs to the
> xboard compatible servers,for example it is possible to connect to it
> with:

Hi,

I'll check this server in the next few days and find out why eboard is
failing, eboard was written with FICS only in mind, and in particular it
has problems with servers that allow digits in player names, but I plan to
fix that soon.

(for all readers: despite the months without any updates, this week I
restarted working on eboard, fixed a batch of 5 bugs, will check several
engine-related bugs tonight and I have started implementing P2P playing
(direct connection of two eboards over the Internet). A new version should
be released in early July.

When choosing which feature requests to implement and bugs to fix, I'm
trying to honor the chronological order in the sourceforge trackers --
http://sourceforge.net/projects/eboard -> Bugs / Feature Requests.
Although I do check bugs and requests sent by email, having them
centralized at sourceforge helps me.)


.........................................................................
Felipe Paulo Guazzi Bergo - Computer Science MSc Student at Unicamp
be...@se... - Campinas - SP - Brazil - Earth
GPG/PGP mail welcome - GPG/PGP Key: EF8EE808 (keyserver pgp.mit.edu)

* Trigonometry for farmers: swine and coswine.

[eboard-users] To which other serves (than FICS) I can connect with eboard ?

[Nayel F. <nay...@gm...>]

Hello,

there is an option in eboard to connect
to another server (an other than the 
Free Internet Chess Server).
Well, I have tried to connect to the
French FICS which address is
jeu.echecs.com
but it does not work, because the user name
is not transmitted correctly.

The Server http://jeu.echecs.com has quite a lot
of players and offers a Java Applet on its homepage.
But jeu.echecs.com also belongs to the xboard compatible
servers,for example it is possible to connect to it with:

xboard -size mediocre -ics -icshost jeu.echecs.com

However, a direct telnet connection to jeu.echecs.com
is not possible. May be this indicates the reason 
why eboard can not connect to jeu.echecs.com?

By the way, congratulations to the good program.
The online help is good, too. It could be even more detailed!
The other grafic frontends to chess servers that I know
have only few documentation and online help.
Hold on with the development!

Greetings,
Nayel

Re: [eboard-users] Eboard and ICC questions...

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

On Fri, 2 May 2003, Jason T. Breitweg wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Just started using eboard and I had a couple of questions.  I used
> eboard for FICS games and everything seems to work fine but the other
> day I logged into ICC (chessclub.com) with eboard.  Does eboard work
> with timestamp (not timeseal)?  If so how does one set this up?
>
> Has anyone else noticed problems on ICC with eboard when trying to
> observe games?  I kept getting the game in the console but the game
> board would never update.  Is this a big or a feature?  It worked
> perfectly with FICS.  I mainly log onto ICC to observe tournament
> games.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

eboard does not work on ICC; it is unable to parse ICC output correctly. I
don't play at ICC and I have no interest in making eboard compatible with
it. Long ago I have told people who asked me for ICC support that, since
eboard is open source and ICC people will know better about ICC
output/protocol than me, an ICC player should go and program ICC protocol
support.  No one showed up. Also, it seems that ICC administration
wouldn't be happy with users using third party software instead of their
BlitzIn spyware.

.........................................................................
Felipe Paulo Guazzi Bergo - Computer Science MSc Student at Unicamp
be...@se... - Campinas - SP - Brazil - Earth
GPG/PGP mail welcome - GPG/PGP Key: EF8EE808 (keyserver pgp.mit.edu)